— a blog of Libyan arts, language, literature, and scholarship —

About

The Silphium Gatherer is a blog focusing on scholarship of Libya in as many fields as possible, including but not limited to: arts, ethnography, histories, linguistics, literature, music, and urban studies. Most blogposts will be in the form of bibliographic references with a brief description of the study, and links where possible. Longer posts, announcements of events and exhibits, and the odd commentary will also occasionally appear. The curator of this blog is Adam Benkato. This blog is motivated by the recognition of the need to put Libya on the map in a number of academic disciplines. It will therefore gather resources, link to publications, make older or inaccessible sources available, and above all draw attention to what studies do exist and should be more well known. It will be bilingual as often as possible.

Silphium was a plant produced in ancient Libya and prized for its medicinal benefits—as Libya is the least studied of North African countries, new, unique, and critical research is the ‘silphium’ of modern Libya…